


crystal-clear

by vanitaslaughing



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: (pounds on the major character death tag) this bad boy is serious, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Ending, Gen, Sneaking Around, bc i remembered that i live like this, reading books that arent meant to be read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 12:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20135125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: “Would you mind telling me your name?”“Lyna,” she murmured, and the man nodded.“Lyna. Let’s wait for my companions and then we’ll go to the Crystarium, okay?”She wanted her mother and her father to get up. But much like the merchants they wouldn’t be getting up. She instead raised a hand to wipe the blood off the man’s chin and stopped at the crystal creeping up his cheek. “Okay.”





	crystal-clear

Her first memory of him was how cold the crystal hand was. Cold but not unwelcome. It was all hazy and nonsensical; she was too young to remember faces or voices or most of anything really. But she clearly remembered the hand she eventually clung to thinking it would just be another person’s hand, as warm as her father’s used to be, as gentle and soft as her mother’s always was.

The crystal was cold. Cold as nights allegedly were, cold as winter allegedly was—almost unreal.

But in that very moment, so very, very comforting. Whatever the adults said went over her head. The man with the hand as blue as the Crystal Tower off in the distance said nothing as she desperately clung to him and did not turn to her until she let out a whimper.

At least these sin eaters did not have the touch a woman with a spear said. Small mercies. She didn’t understand what that meant, didn’t want to understand what it meant. All she knew in this very moment was the fact that her parents were on the ground not moving just as the travellers from Amh Araeng the other week were and that the man with the crystal hand had saved her. She’d seen mages, of course, everyone had. But something about the way he moved was almost a little clumsy, as if he were used to doing something else but had picked this up with the same desperation that her mother… her mother….

She started weeping and the man freed his hand from her faltering grasp. For a moment the adults said something, then suddenly he leaned down and picked her up. She didn’t even think twice about it and threw her arms around his neck and grabbed fistfuls of incredibly strangely soft fabric. All the man did was make certain her crying did not have her falling down from this height. She could feel how soft his voice was even if she didn’t really hear him speak through her crying. Eventually she calmed down and hiccuped just around the time the other adults grabbed their weapons again. Of course she knew what they were going to do—soldiers always swept the place just in case there was another sin eater around. The man holding her did not move with them and instead hummed. Gods, his voice was melodious.

The next thing she clearly remembered was looking at him and seeing the blue crystal that somehow crept over his jaw and nearly reached his nose. His eyes were hidden but the sad smile he gave her was comforting as well.

Were it not for blood rolling out of the corner of his mouth. She let out a strangled cry—the man was going to die just as her mother and father had. She must have whimpered that in that very moment, because what stood out next was him shaking his head.

“Worry not; ‘tis but a scratch.” Then his voice, crystal-clear and gentle, got darker. “I apologise. Had we but been faster… had we but been faster.” Then he shook his head. “Would you mind telling me your name?”

She wasn’t old enough to properly remember. But much like any child born under the everlastingly light skies of Norvrandt she knew death most intimately despite her age.

“Lyna,” she murmured, and the man nodded.

“Lyna. Let’s wait for my companions and then we’ll go to the Crystarium, okay?”

She wanted her mother and her father to get up. But much like the merchants they wouldn’t be getting up. She instead raised a hand to wipe the blood off the man’s chin and stopped at the crystal creeping up his cheek. “Okay.”

* * *

The Exarch wound up being the one to take care of her. He always said that she refused to let go of him—though later people said that they knew that within the spire he was kind of lonely.

Not that Lyna grew up in the Crystal Tower’s upper reaches in the end. No one ever spent the night there. No one ever spent longer than strictly necessary there.

Except for the tower’s keeper. The Crystal Exarch was a man who either had no name, had shed his name, or had forgotten his name. She asked about it once. He only gave her one of his smiles that almost gave away the fact that he had little fangs and said that ‘Exarch’ was fine, and smiled wider once she said that she was going to find out one way or another and then she would call him by that. Once old enough, she figured that he likely had Mystel or Viis heritage—perhaps both. She had no idea how it had been before the Flood of Light but nowadays there were plenty of children who ran around tall like Elves but with slit pupils like a Mystel; plenty of Viis with short ears and soft scales on their faces as opposed to their parent’s sharp and hard ones.

She never asked him about it. Sometimes she thought she caught a flash of bright red under his hood, sometimes white-streaked red strands of hair fell into his face under the hood—but never did he see his ears.

The first time she saw him without the hood was a dreary day of losses. The adults had all looked gloomy, she had most definitely heard some of the newcomers sob. No one really told her what this was about, but Lyna was no stranger to tragedy under the unforgiving everlasting light of the skies. She offered a small prayer that whoever had been lost that day found their way to the sunless sea beyond the light, and then hurried to find the Exarch. He always knew what was going on, he was always informed first unless he had been in the field himself. And she knew he had been out today.

He tried to act all tough and wise, but being one of the few people who frequented the tower despite him not even making it off-limits unless someone wished to reside within the upper reaches she knew that he was far from a tough, wise man.

He was just as human as everyone else, crystal arm and gentle voice or no.

When she found the Crystal Exarch, he was sitting on the floor. His hood was drawn back and she saw the ears on his head that clearly marked him of Mystel descent. His shoulders shook as he sat there in the Ocular with his back turned to the door and both his arms raised to his face. She strained to listen to him, but if he was crying then he was doing so rather quietly.

A heartbeat later she saw one of his ears twitch and she knew that he had known she was approaching long before she even turned her attention to the door to the Ocular. It had something to do with how old he was and why he had that crystalline arm rather than a normal one, but once again there were things that went over her head.

He said nothing—and Lyna merely walked over to him. Sat down next to him.

His eyes were a shade of red that she had never seen on anyone. There were plenty of Lakeland elves who had red eyes, but something about the Exarch’s seemed unreal. Part of her had expected his eyes to be as crystal blue as the tower he ruled from. His hair that she had seen so many times was long since not merely grey-streaked; the roots were starting to go grey, the tips had long since gone from red to white and unless her eyes deceived her the very tips of his ears were slightly lighter as well. She knew now that he either hid a tail under his robes—or he had lost the tail. His ears at least marked him as Mystel son of Mystel parents.

But those eyes.

Maybe he hid his face because of the intense red? Because of how unreal, almost frightening they looked? But there were plenty of ways to hide one’s eyes without clearly smothering his ears and hiding the tail. Maybe he had been on the run when the Crystal Tower answered his call, maybe he still thought he had to hide after all these years. But Lyna didn’t ask. She didn’t say anything while sitting next to him and instead leaned her head against his arm. He moved slightly, slowly—his arm was shaking, he had definitely been crying—and she found herself leaning against his side with the cold, familiar, comforting crystal arm around her shoulders.

Neither of them said anything. She knew tragedy—but she started to understand that no matter how much tragedy one saw, some people never got used to it. And the Exarch was one of these people.

* * *

It was strange to see these books in that strange script that was barely comprehensible to her but still similar enough to written Vrandt that she managed to read them. All stories around the Crystarium, especially the written ones in the Cabinet of Curiosity, talked about Warriors of Light as villains. As scum who brought the world to the brink and then they had the nerve to _die. _Suicide, even. The cowards who brought about the Flood of Light, which the Oracle stopped so selflessly.

But the Exarch’s books were a story about a Warrior of Light. Not the ones that she learned about in history lessons in the cabinet, but a single person who stood against a flood of impossibly brutal challenges. At first it had been her own curiosity that had drawn her into this room; then the most worn book on the floor had caught her attention, and now she was sitting on the floor as the Exarch surely did considering that everything in this sparsely decorated room was covered in books in scripts she had never seen. There was a flourish to these words that looked similar enough to understand but she still slowly progressed. Agonisingly slowly.

The Exarch would not be back any time soon. Ostall needed reinforcing and the Exarch himself had grabbed his staff, had left the Crystarium on an Amaro with his robes fluttering in the wind along with the others. It sounded like a week-long thing, and Ostall was not far enough for the Exarch to start feeling drained. Holminster Switch would be worse. But Holminster Switch lay snugly between hills and forests and fending off sin eaters was easy for them even before the Crystarium offered them help with reinforcing the place. She’d been there before—a pretty settlement, almost reminiscent of what Norvrandt may have looked like before the Flood.

But with the Mystel master out the Viis granddaughter had free reign over the place. And his personal quarters were a mystery that was worth solving.

There was fine handwriting in the same strange letters that she _knew_ was from the Exarch. She’d seen how fine but shaky it was, and these letters looked very much the same. It seemed he tried to make a sense of the timeline in this book. A comment on a chapter named _The Rise and Fall of the Lady of the Vortex _noted that this Cid Garlond mentioned as integral part of defeating her had survived. Survived what? The book certainly did not tell her, and the Exarch’s notes were incomprehensible to her. She had no idea what a _Gaius van Baelsar_ was, or what an _Ultima Weapon_ did, why it would empower itself by consuming the essences of _primals,_ or how that was the _Allagan Empire’s_ greatest creation. Allag certainly sounded similar enough to Ronka but this entire story, every place it happened in—she’d never heard of them. But she found herself reaching for another book that looked well-worn, and in the span of a day worked through quite a good chunk of the story.

The Exarch’s notes were still mostly incomprehensible to her; all focused and questioning and full of cryptic notes. The Scions, whose names she had forgotten, all had had little notes next to their introductions. Most of them died to something the Exarch noted as _Black Rose_, as did a good chunk of the other important or not so important people in the Warrior of Light’s story. As if… as if the Exarch had been there. Or knew people who had been there. But surely these books were fiction; a single Warrior of Light in wondrous-sounding places like _the Black Shroud_ and _Dravania_ and _Gyr Abania?_ Ridiculous. Warriors of Light were villains.

Yet this one seemed to selflessly march to their doom when someone asked it of them. They slew _primals_ and _Garleans_, liberated continents and reignited the sparks of rebellion.

Rarely she came across a note that did not seem to relate to whatever the _Black Rose incident_ was. Those were smaller, shakier than the Exarch’s usual handwriting. And they all related to the Warrior of Light. He wondered where they had gotten that scar in the way people described them. Remarked this and that, corrected a report on the Warrior of Light’s supposed eye colour. Wondered whether they had let their hair grow, or if they had cut it all off. Once, just once, when she reached a horrifying part where finally, _finally,_ the books explained what _Black Rose_ was, there was something written so awfully that she had a hard time making it out. It looked as if the Exarch had written this either in the rain or… while sobbing profusely.

“_I’m sorry, Krile.”_

Krile was one of the Warrior of Light’s companions, someone who had come from somewhere else and who proved to be a wonderful ally and friend over and over. Her death in this section was barely more than a little comment. A remark. Another victim of _Black Rose,_ taken in the Scion’s headquarters where, from the way the bodies were collapsed, she had been the first to breathe her last. That was all. That was all there stood, and Lyna moved on. There were others that people who survived mentioned; a survivor named Riol would bury them even though by then there was no point in trying to get rid of the mountains of corpses. He then vanished from the pages of history.

When she turned to the next page, she saw another few names that she had seen before. Cid Garlond was mentioned again, written down as survivor. Nero Scaeva was also mentioned, Biggs and Wedge. But this page looked even worse than the one before. There was ink on it, it looked as if the Exarch had tried tearing it out from the way it was wrinkled; the tear stains were even worse here.

The names on this page sounded and looked like nonsense.

_Rammbroes_ was mentioned as someone who survived but was found quite literally gutted in the chaos and disregard for their fellow _Spoken_ that rose in the aftermath of the Black Rose Incident that people started calling _Eighth Umbral Calamity._ There were other names, any and all of them sounding even stranger until she reached another one of these baffling _Miqo’te_ names. A name that she hadn’t seen before—but the Exarch clearly had. He had apparently half-tried to scratch that name out, decided against it, attempted to make certain that the book did not break.

_G’raha Tia._

What had this G’raha Tia done to the Exarch? Wait, no. The Exarch came from Norvrandt like her. Why did he hate this fictional character who was noted as missing and considered dead long before this fictional poison wiped out everyone he had ever known? She hadn’t even seen that name mentioned before. What would have made the Exarch hate this person? No, no, this absent player on a stage that played a tragedy, like so many tragedies that took place here?

She closed the book. Tried to reach for another.

But she instead closed her eyes. The Exarch was no stranger to tragedy, but still he seemed affected by a lot of it. Assuming these books were fiction then he should long since be used to it. Unless they were… reports. Reports of things that happened in a country called _Hydaelyn_, where a hero from _Eorzea_ would save the world and die in an _Umbral Calamity._ But it seemed so nonsensical.

She reached for a botanical book instead only to realise with a disappointed sigh that it was written in an even stranger script; but there was no doubt that the Exarch clearly understood what these strange letters and symbols meant. It reminded her of Ronkan scripture. Perhaps this strange _Allagan Empire_, then.

She almost missed those other cities from the strange tragedy that read like a report.

* * *

It was strange that a mage like the Exarch was the one giving her the most valuable tips on how to handle far-away and moving targets with throwing weapons. She was a young woman now, a far cry from the child sobbing into his arms, a far cry from the little girl sitting next to him or the barely-a-teenager snooping around in his rooms reading his collection of books. And she had decided that she wanted to fight for the Crystarium, for the friends she made and for the people she loved so dearly.

She had expected complaints. The Exarch was a politician, a man who understood the inner and outer workings of a city and people often joked about her having a hand for it as well. Maybe she would be the second Crystal Exarch—because unless he hid a Viis’ ears beneath that hood, most of them joked, he would surely be passing away from old age by now.

But there were no complaints. The Exarch even seemed to smile, and she hoped that it reached his wonderful but frightening red eyes. Then, all of a sudden, he sounded like he knew precisely how to handle these weapons.

She asked him about it. Asked why a mage of renown like him would understand weapons like that.

He merely chuckled, an almost sad-sounding little laugh as he leaned back to look at the skies that never darkened.

“I used to be a bowman ‘ere I taught myself the arcane, Lyna.”

Mystel were always crafty with what they did, but weren’t they usually more of the… she didn’t know the right word for it. But they were never really skilled with bows. Good with swords, sometimes good with magic like the Exarch, but most of them seemed to have some serious trouble seeing into the distance. Though those with proper fangs and wide-blown pupils saw better than their cat-eyed fellows; the cat-eyed fellows were generally sturdier.

“A… bowman?”

He laughed with that crystal-clear voice of his, something that even made him reach his flesh hand to cover his mouth in a motion that almost seemed like he was embarrassed of laughing.

“One would hardly believe that an old man like I once jumped about with naught but fluff in my head trying to impress people. But yes, Lyna, a bowman. A rather good one, though perhaps ‘twas suicidal overconfidence rather than genuine skill. Hindsight does quite change the perspective on things you did when you were young. I digress; the reason I know about hitting moving targets from afar with things not guided by the arcane is because I did it myself once upon a time.”

He turned out to be an excellent instructor. She made progress so quickly that it terrified her fellow new recruits, and she seemed to soar through any sort of initiation test. Hells, even her first match against a sin eater turned out to be a rather one-sided match; the creature that haunted her sparse nightmares with hungry eyes and a wide-open maw collapsed before it even managed to put a scratch on her.

She was to report the incident to the Exarch, however. She pushed through the doors thinking that he would be in the Ocular, but she found the place empty. Knocking on the doors to his private quarters that were snugly hid away off to the side here got her no answer either. They were also locked, which meant that he was not within.

Strange.

Normally the Exarch’s presence was something that was plainly obvious when he left the tower. But no commotion in the city had told her that he had left the place today.

She started climbing down, back to the entrance. Nothing.

No matter how many rooms she swept through, the Exarch was nowhere to be found.

The spire. The stairs were considered off-limits because no one was allowed to reside there; once upon a time people had lived within the tower but they had since moved out into the city. Lyna could swear she heard her own heartbeat echo loudly as she looked at the stairs she had never taken in her whole life.

The Crystal Tower was a marvel that answered the Exarch’s prayer, something that seemed to have demanded part of his flesh as compensation for that. He never once complained about it, called the crystal hand just a part of his body and that it really wasn’t all that different from his flesh arm. But she had seen it. The way the crystal started cracking whenever he was out of Lakeland for too long. She saw the longing for the distant parts of Norvrandt in how tense his jaw was when he declined coming along to talk to the Night’s Blessed for a week. She knew that he longed for an adventure just as the Warrior of Light from his stories—or perhaps one with the selfsame person. She wasn’t entirely certain what was truth and what was fiction. Perhaps somewhere out there Mor Dhona had existed. Perhaps somewhere out there the Exarch desperately wished to be G’raha Tia who got to climb the Crystal Tower with the Warrior of Light. The G’raha Tia who closed the doors forevermore to wait for a future that would not have his friends.

It had made her think. The doors slid closed and G’raha Tia never once returned. He said that the future awaited his arrival; and with the Crystal Tower he could turn it into the beacon of hope that it was once for ancient Allag. These names all felt so exotic on her tongue, but they felt _right._ And if G’raha Tia truly awoke in the future, after the _Calamity,_ then he would surely… have his heart break. No one could stand hearing such a tragedy without breaking down. But where did the Exarch come into this equation?

G’raha Tia was a _Miqo’te._ The Exarch was a Mystel.

Were they related? Was the Exarch G’raha Tia’s son, born in a future where the Warrior of Light was long gone? It would explain why the Exarch seemed to ignore or was angry at every sparse mention of that man’s name. It would explain why he seemed to _love_ that Warrior of Light more than his own life. Talk about saving them if time travel were possible. Talk about unwriting a history already written. Though, perhaps… perhaps that wasn’t his writing. Perhaps it was G’raha Tia’s. His… father’s? His friend’s?

_His own?_

She finally reached the very top of the tower, and she looked around in awe for a moment. It was a throne room, she realised. There was a throne.

But her awe immediately dissipated when she saw the Exarch on the ground, flat, unresponsive when she called for him. He had collapsed and Lyna ran over. The Exarch was old, the voices of the people from the Crystarium echoed in her pounding ears as she dropped down next to him and gathered him up in her arms.

The crystal was cold.

His skin on the other hand was flushed and hot to the touch—feverish. She tore the hood off his face and cursed the fact that he wore these elaborate robes. It sounded as if he had trouble breathing and the heavy cloth that was made of something she had never seen in her life seemed to make this worse.

“Exarch!”

He opened his eyes a little. His ears flopped uselessly as she tightened her hold on him a little; his pale face was paler than usual. The red of his eyes and his hair made her think of spilled blood instead of red crystal this time, and Lyna felt the blood drain from her face when she saw how wide-blown his pupils were. He didn’t seem lucid. He didn’t _sound_ lucid when a name she had never heard before left his lips in a hoarse whisper. That name was all he said along with a mumbled apology—and he went limp in her arms, his breathing slow, steady and way, way too quiet.

Lyna carried him, had half a mind to scream out into the city that the Exarch needed help. But the alchemists and doctors of Spagyrics were not that far. She could carry him. She _would_ carry him. Her only family.

Only halfway down the tower with the Exarch still completely limp and unconscious in her arms, with the crystal one hanging down, she realised that the name had whispered sounded like the name that the Warrior of Light had had in those stories. Of course. Of course he would whisper that name even as he likely thought he was dying—and Lyna choked back tears as she rushed out the front door. Her mother’s last words had been her name. The Exarch’s might be that Warrior of Light’s.

The people kept her in and assigned her a bed. Apparently she was going into something akin to a shock despite the fact that the Exarch would be fine. He had merely collapsed under the unrelentingly bright skies from exhaustion, from some sort of mild aetheric imbalance likely caused by him casting spells he wasn’t used to.

* * *

She said the Warrior of Light’s name in the Ocular. The Exarch’s head all but shot around, though his tense shoulders immediately drooped once he saw her.

They had given her something for the deep cuts on the parts of his body that had not yet turned into crystal. He and the Warrior of Darkness—the bloody Warrior of Darkness—had led the charge into Holminster Switch. And then night had fallen after the Warrior of Darkness—the thrice-damned Warrior of Darkness—had slain the Lightwarden—the bloody Lightwarden, slain—but Lyna did not want to celebrate. She was worried about the Exarch.

And she started to understand why his new mysterious friend’s name was familiar. Why the other’s names were familiar.

She had read them, years ago. The Scions. These people had the names of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, and the person who seemed to make the Exarch _glow_ even from underneath his hood bore the same name as the Warrior of Light from these tales.

She walked up to him and tore the hood down. Her grandfather, the Exarch, the man who had raised her and raised this city, was a shrewd liar but she knew that this was mostly thanks to the hood. Like all Mystel he wore his heart on his sleeve; or rather it sat atop his head. His ears flattened a little as he peeked behind her.

Lyna shook her head. “No one will be coming here any time soon. Most retired to their quarters or are desperately attempting to purchase lamps.”

He nodded but his ears remained down as he looked up at her. She loved that man, she loved him very dearly—but she was starting to understand why he hid the eyes. She had confessed that she had tried reading these things in the past. He had been surprised by the fact that she had been able to read Eorzean script, but other than that he had said nothing. She had seen the worry in the way his jaw clenched. And suddenly she understood.

“The Warrior of Darkness is the Warrior of Light from these stories, are they not.”

It wasn’t a question and the man didn’t even try to deny it. He merely nodded as she bent over a little to gently untangle his robes a little. She clicked her tongue; she had watched how that Lightwarden nearly tore open his chest. Had it not been for the shield and the fact that the Warrior of Darkness had jumped in to save the Exarch he would be dead. He only quietly asked her to get this over with, and then said nothing as she disinfected it.

“Are you in these stories?”

“Merely a footnote. And I do not intend to aim above my station. But Norvrandt needs them.”

The fact that he was very obviously in love with them notwithstanding. Lyna did not have to point that out.

It was that love that worried her. It made people act foolish. It made them choose death if they could save the people they loved. Her mother had chosen that.

She did not doubt for a moment that the Exarch would choose utter oblivion if it saved the Warrior of Light.

* * *

Norvrandt needed them. Norvrandt needed _him._

But the skies above Kholusia parted and gave way to the endless dark that waited beyond—but this time Lyna felt nothing but fear. The Exarch had departed with a sad, fond smile. He had even done as he had when she was a child; he had asked her to bend down a little this time around, seeing as he was rather small for a Mystel man and old to boot. And then he had ruffled her hair fondly. Had said that he had been upset that they couldn’t have saved her family but that he was glad that they had managed to save her at the very least. Called her… his pride. He had _never_ done anything of the like. And thus, as she all but stormed away from Amity to where the Talos had now gone still with the stars twinkling above, she only felt fear.

Her dread only intensified as she hurriedly clambered up the Talos, as she all but stumbled and tore through Vauthry’s twisted paradise that was crumbling now that the final Lightwarden lay slain. She heard the wail and she knew, she _knew_ that she would only find something that would break her heart. The night’s coldness made her hair stand as she finally climbed up and saw the Scions of the Exarch’s stories stand around the Warrior of Darkness. They held the Exarch’s staff, were all but collapsed on their knees and the staff was the only thing that held them up.

“How could you!” The Warrior’s voice was _broken_. “How could you do this to me not once but twice, G’raha! Answer me!” Their wailing broke down into hysteric sobbing as the staff slid from their hands and the loud clank as it hit the ground tore through the silent wall of horror that had built up around Lyna.

G’raha Tia.

The man who wanted to see the marvels of the Allagan Empire for himself. The man who eventually closed the Crystal Tower’s doors with a sad smile and a hope that he would turn the Crystal Tower into a beacon of hope once more. Of course the Tower’s Keeper would be the same across all worlds. On the Source it was him.

On the First it was still him.

So many people wondered what the Exarch’s name was. She had wondered it as well, and now she had it.

She had it, and she broke out of her stasis as she stepped over the very disconcerting splatter of white blood that did seemingly belong to no one. She knew, in her heart of hearts she knew. She had seen the books. Had seen the theories on siphoning aetheric power from another living being without killing them. Had seen the calculations for a teleportation magic that seemed wild even to those who had studied Ronkan magic.

G’raha Tia lived to become the Crystal Exarch to save a world not his own because its demise would spell the Warrior of Light’s demise.

The Crystal Exarch on the other hand… the Crystal Exarch marched to the final battlefield... and....

There were shards of blue crystal swimming in the half-dried white blood. Lyna wanted to throw up as she got down on her knees before the profusely sobbing Warrior of Darkness.

Before she could even say something that person slung their arms around her—and the dam broke. The Warrior of Darkness, saviour of Eorzea and Norvrandt both, was _apologising to her._ She felt thrown back to when she was a young woman back from her first sin eater kill. She remembered the Exarch limp in her arms, remembered him hoarsely whispering an apology to a person that she thought fiction. That person was in front of her now, was sobbing into her shoulder.

Lyna understood. She understood and started silently weeping as the Warrior of Light—Warrior of Darkness—sobbed loudly.

He had never intended to live to see Norvrandt rebuild no matter how many times he had talked about it in the past weeks. His vibrating excitement had caught all of them, had even slowly but steadily lifted everyone’s spirits after Vauthry’s slaughter.

And now the man was gone. He had _killed himself_ to save _all of them._ But most of them all the very person whose hair Lyna found herself stroking.

He was gone.

He was gone and all that remained of him were his tower and the staff.

She looked up at the Scions when Ryne made a strangled half-sob-half-scream sound. The Warrior of Darkness immediately untangled themselves from her to look at their companions—Lyna blinked a few times in surprise as she watched Alphinaud and Alisaie all but blink out of existence, Alisaie with her mouth open as if she tried to say something in the last moment.

Yshtola said something about their summoner being dead and them being released from the First before she and Urianger vanished. Ryne so very desperately tried to cling to Thancred, but even as he leaned down, stroked her hair and said that he was so, so proud of her and that she could stay at the Crystarium Lyna could see that neither he nor Ryne were happy about this parting.

What remained at the Crown of the Immaculate atop Mt Gulg were the heartbroken Warrior of Light who continued sobbing, the now orphaned Oracle of Light who clung to the Warrior, and Lyna. She wasn’t sure whether to consider herself twice orphaned now that her parents and the Exarch were dead.

All of the people she cared about seemed to go off to die without her getting a chance to say farewell.

She wasn’t unlike G’raha Tia in that regard.

Made sense.

He raised her, after all.

He raised her, and she never got to call him by his given name.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/cleignewheat) | [tumblr](https://aethercurrent.tumblr.com/)


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